I guess my son is just easily grossed out. I don’t remember how the topic came up, I remember the look on his face when I said I nursed him.
As far as the birth, he was an emergency c-section, probably easier for the poor boy to handle.
My mother had us in the late 60s-70s, so my mother didn’t feel any pressure to breastfeed. So we all got the bottle.
My brother and sister were nursed, but my mom ended up with a nasty bout of pneumonia when I was born and couldn’t make enough milk for me so I was a bottle baby. Being female, I have never really been grossed out at the thought of nursing, but I did have a month of actual nursing so I suppose I got the colostrum and early milk so I got the immuno-goodies just fine. I have no opinion about being nursed vs bottle fed - if you can’t put out the milk, use a bottle. If you can put out the milk, nurse and pump as needed. <shrug> I have been exposed to both extremes - the bottles are evil and the bottles are just fine lectures. Mind your own damned business and let the mom do what is needed. People get too damned hung up on things.
And I agree, people tend to sexualize a perfectly natural function, I don’t think that the moms should be exiled to the bathroom to nurse, just use a shawl or whatever to cover up for the weak little precious butterflies that might get traumatized at the glimpse of a nipple.
All three of us were nursed, and I nursed all three of mine (still nursing #3, he’s only 10 months old). My older boys sit with me while I nurse their brother, and we talk about how they used to nurse as well.
I don’t recall and never asked. I mean, really? It comes up in conversation?
I was a formula baby, as were my younger siblings. From what I understand, it was mostly because my dad didn’t like the idea of us kids taking over Mom’s boobs. It was a delightful marriage.
I wasn’t nursed, mostly because I was a preemie and spent several weeks in the hospital (1968), and hospitals just weren’t set up to deal with that stuff then. My mom still feels guilty about it. It wouldn’t have grossed me out at all. I think she nursed my younger sister, but I was 2 so I don’t remember.
Is the term “nursed” used in the US because the more correct/specific term, “breastfed” includes the word “breast”?
It seems like a confusing euphemism. I was nursed, in that a nurse cared for me during hospitalization. I was also breastfed - mum was a hippie!
We were both mid-70s babies and my mam breastfed both of us for about two years - not because of ‘pressure’ (she says all the pressure was to bottle-feed), but because she took it for granted that that’s how you feed a baby unless there’s some reason not to.
It seems to me utterly bizarre to be squicked out by that idea. Babies need milk, boobs make the milk, babies drink the milk, what on earth is there to be grossed out by? The only reason I can imagine (although obviously I could well be missing something) is if you consider boobs to be purely sexual, so that breastfeeding must have sexual undertones. Which is fucked up.
Most of us who were vaginal births are aware of that, but we generally prefer not to dwell on thoughts that include our parents’ crotches. In a similar vein, most people don’t really dwell on the details of their conception.
How old is your son? You can’t really expect the same reaction from, say, an 11 year old as you can a bunch of 30-60 year olds, ya know? And I have to think that most people who reached the age of being viscerally aware of boobies as a sexual thing would have at least a split second of :eek: at suddenly being handed the knowledge they’d sucked on their mom’s nipples, no matter how cool they were with it later on.
Yeah, actually, **CrazyCatLady **makes a good point. If the OP’s son is, say, thirteen, then the thought of BOOBS BOOBS BOOBS is gonna be omnipresent and overwhelmingly sexual to him, and it’s not bizarre for him to be grossed out by the idea of sucking his mother’s boobs.
I was nursed and I don’t have any strong opinions on it.
Amusingly, my older sister was bottle fed because my father said that breastfeeding was unnnatural. Ah, the olden days. When I was born, my mother insisted on it.
I don’t know and anyone who would know has been dead for 25 years.
No (bottle fed), and I didn’t slide out of a vagina either. I was a c-section baby. I can’t even imagine my mother bringing these topics up in conversation, and I’m female.
My daughter and son were both breast fed and then eventually weaned to a tippy cup. Neither would accept a bottle. I kinda wish they would have so that I could have participated in feeding. They both were exceptionally happy and healthy.
It surprises me that I don’t know whether I was breastfed or not - it’s not like this comes up in conversation usually. I assume I was because my parents were “early hippies”. I’m the oldest of four, born in 1958. I know she breastfed my youngest brother, born in 1970 because I remember that.
All of my nieces and nephews have been breastfed, for sure. My most recent nephew is just a little over a year old and my SIL had a little cape she called her “boob burka” that she used to discreetly feed him in public.
My son is a teen, 18. If he happens to catch the sight of me nekkid he has to cover his eyes, although I think that is part joke.
It came up in conversation because my niece had a baby a while back, and as always with a new baby, the topic of breast-feeding vs bottles comes up.
With me and my mom, it’s come up in conversations with me about my nieces as babies and my friends’ babies.
I suspect if I had my own kids it’d have come up in conversations about my own feeding choices.
I suspect it comes up less between mother and son but I think my brother is aware he was bottle fed, as his girls were so it may have come up in conversations between him and my mom.
Sometimes. But mostly I hear and read breastfed.
I was breastfed, which I’ve somehow always known, although I don’t recall the first time I found out. It certainly came up in conversation when I was having trouble breastfeeding my first child. My mom couldn’t understand what the problem was, as it “just came so easily!” to her and the infant me.
I wasn’t able to nurse my daughter due to her prematurity and my own supply issues and ginormous nipples. For one month, we thought she’d gotten it, but she lost weight, so it was back to pumping for me. When she was very wee, but able to talk (about 14 months) she saw another baby nursing and asked if she could try it. I felt a little weird, but since I was still pumping and there are certainly toddlers that breastfeed at that age, I let her try. She bit me. We didn’t try again. Apparently, nursing isn’t a natural action if you’ve missed the window of opportunity.
Boobs have never been overwhelmingly sexual to me, even when I was 13, perhaps partly because I’ve been familiar with breastfeeding from an early age and have never regarded it as anything other than normal.